Assassination Reminds India That Sikh Revolt Is Still a Threat

By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: September 3, 1995

NEW DELHI, Sept. 2—
As a state funeral was held today in the Punjab for the victim of India's latest political assassination, the country's top security officials were conducting an urgent review of arrangements for protecting the country's most endangered leaders.

The powerful bomb blast on Thursday that killed Beant Singh, the Chief Minister of the Punjab, as well as 15 other people, has shaken the Indian Government's confidence that it had ended an insurgency by Sikh separatists that had long paralyzed life in the state.

Mr. Singh, who played a key role in a crackdown that was thought to have ended the decade-old insurgency, was eulogized as his cremation today in Chandigarh, the Punjab capital, as a "messiah of peace."

But along with their political anxieties, Indian leaders were reported to have ordered an urgent review of security arrangements for top political leaders. Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao, who rated Mr. Singh among his most important political allies, stayed away from the rites for what were said to have been security reasons, and made a brief visit instead, by helicopter, to Mr. Singh's family in the city.

The bombing marked the third time in 11 years that a top Indian politician has been killed. After two earlier killings, the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi at her New Delhi home in 1984, and the suicide bombing at a political rally outside Madras in 1991 that killed her son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi, security arrangements were reviewed and tightened, Indian officials said.

In Mr. Singh's killing, comparisons have been drawn with the death of Mrs. Gandhi, who was gunned down by Sikh security guards seeking revenge for the attack Mrs. Gandhi ordered in June 1984 on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the Sikhs' holiest shrine. Because he was on the death lists of Sikh militant groups for his role in suppressing the Punjab insurgency, Mr. Singh, who was 73 years old, had been eligible for the highest level of protection.

Yet according to preliminary conclusions made by investigators, Mr. Singh was killed by a bomb, possibly two bombs, hidden in one of three heavily armored cars that waiting for him outside the entrance to the main Punjab government building.

Survivors said the explosion occurred as Mr. Singh settled into the rear seat of one of the vehicles. Those killed included Mr. Singh's driver, his personal physician and three agents of the National Security Guard, India's elite protection force, as well as police officers, doormen and bystanders.

On Friday, investigators said they had found a remote-control device and notes relating to a plan to kill Mr. Singh in a vehicle that had been abandoned inside the secretariat compound. Investigators said the vehicle, a white Indian-made Ambassador similar to the one in which Mr. Singh died, had been bought in Delhi recently by two Sikh men in their mid-20s. Police sketches of the two men have been circulated.

Security officials in New Delhi said issues under review included how the explosives were placed in the car, which was supposed to have been under close guard at all times, and how the killers knew which of the three vehicles Mr. Singh was going to use at the time of the attack.

"The incident could not have taken place in a high-security zone without someone on the inside," said Rajesh Pilot, the minister for internal security. "This is most worrying."

The implication was that a security breakdown could have occurred among Sikhs who predominate among the Punjab police, who were said to have been responsible for guarding Mr. Singh's official cars.